Transformers: The Last Knight – Robots in Disgust

So a couple of days ago, the new Transformers trailer got unleashed to the world and it was a whole new level of terrible. Given the awful previous films, it didn’t have much to live up to.

I didn’t think it could get worse, but it did.

It got so much worse. It had Nazi’s, knights, horses, archers everything other than something to get excited about. It was awful. Anthony Hopkins bless him tried his best to instill some kind gravity to the situation, explaining about the war between the Autobots and Decepticons. Damn it! We’ve had four previous films telling us this, none of which relates to the cartoon series. Enough already. Fuck off with the damn war that means nothing when half the Transformers don’t even talk. But alas even Sir Anthony’s dulcet tones couldn’t save this from being an utter disaster.

At the end of Transformers 4, Prime flew off on his ridiculous jet pack crap to find his creators. I thought, hold on, this could be good, we could see Unicron, the planet eating planet sized transformer who gave birth to the real Galvatron, not that fucking prick of a truck they decided to use. (Tell me, why wasn’t that robot with the gun as a face Galvatron, that makes more sense) anyway I digress. So as I was watching the trailer for The Last Knight, I saw a looming shadow, a planet. I got excited, this is it, this must be Unicron.

Instead, what I saw was something which what looked like a flying Bonsai tree approaching the moon.

That is not Unicron. This is Unicron

To be fair there is no guarantee that is Unicron, but if it is. Fuck fuck fuck. It’s worse than Galactus being a pile of dust in The Fantastic Four. Ugh screw you Hollywood.

The trailer also had Optimus prime being bad. Killing a fellow Transformer, Bumblebee, by the looks of it. Of course this was just a clever cut trailer, Prime will be good again at the end. Anyway who gives a shit really? Who cares if prime is bad? His fucking lips annoy me anyway so he can do one. And Bumblebee hasn’t talked for five movies. So why would I give a shit? Ugh it’s just so terrible, far far worse than I had feared. My childhood has been ruined.

What I don’t understand is why have Transformers, a toy that would make such a great cinematic spectacle turned out to be 4 of the worst films I’ve ever seen (I say 4 because the first one wasn’t terrible, I mean it was bad, but was Ok in its own way) For me at least its the character models, they are awful, full of so many moving parts that you just can’t tell what’s going on. These designs that made them unrecognizable to their cartoon counterparts. Why the fuck does Prime have flames? Why was Jet Fire, a seriously bad ass Transformer suddenly become an old man with a Scottish accent!? Why the actual fuck is Devastator a Dog with a giant ballsack! Jesus fucking christ.

Seriously I would take fan made over Micheal Bay any day.

That’s the first mistake. Secondly the human characters are idiotic. In the first few films all we had was Shia Labeouf shouting no no no no no every 5 minutes and Megan Fox pouting. Marky Mark has bought little to the proceedings in the more recent films. Now, if you want us to feel anything for these wretched robots let them take center stage. Let us feel the emotions and engage with them. Why did Jazz, arguably everyone’s favourite Transformer in the cartoon die after saying just a handful of lines? Thirdly, why are we going back and forth in time? What is the point, The Fallen? What the fuck was that? Why are there Nazi’s and archers in this latest trailer?

I don’t want to know that King Fucking Arthur met a Transformer once. I don’t fucking care.

Take High Moon Studios, they know exactly what’s going down. They made a handful of quite brilliant trailers for their games War for Cybertron and Fall of Cybertron. As you can see in the trailers below, High Moon have changed the look of the characters enough to make them modern and current but kept enough detail to make them look like they did in the cartoon series, which is what Transformers fans want. Although there is dialogue in these trailers, I connect with Prime and Bumblebee more than I ever had in five feature-length films. And look Grimlock looks like Grimlock and Metroplex looks like Metroplex. Tripticon and Omega Prime some of the rarer Transformers look just like they should. Amazing. Paramount need to ditch the shit they are churning out now and give High Moon a call.

So why do they keep getting made? Well Seeing as Transformers: Age of Extinction made $1.1 billion on a budget of $271 million, it’s easy to see why Paramount are keeping with the formula. It’s inexplicable that the fourth film in a terrible franchise made so much money. Each film has got progressively worse, but still makes that dollar.

I have a theory. I’ll admit I’ve been to the cinema and handed over real cash to watch this tripe. I do so because I believe they can’t get any worse. Transformers were my favourite toys as a child, the cartoon series was my favourite cartoon, so I walk into the cinema, Popcorn in hand in the vague hope that the new film will be better than the last. That finally the brilliant G1 transformers will be front and centre and my childhood dream of a live action Transformers film will come true. I somehow dream that all the shit character design, and lack of script for my favourite robot is because of a wider story arch. Like this is how Transformers were before Mount St Helens blew up and destroyed them all, leaving the ark to remake them into the Transformers we know and love. Every time a new film comes out, I believe that it will all work out. And I think thousands of others feel the same. That this hideous mess is just the start of something, laying the foundations. I mean Transformers 4 was a reboot, it had the original Optimus Prime truck design. It had who I thought was Ultra Magnus. New actors had promise. Alas, we have an even worse Prime and the truck who I thought was Ultra Magnus turned out to be fucking Galvatron, made up of lots of floating bits of shit. That was the last straw.

After this latest shit show of Transformers: The Last Knight, I most definitely won’t be going to the cinema to watch it. There is no saving this franchise now, no dreams coming true. I implore everyone who feels the same to resist the urge to go. Let’s boycott this shit, as it’s the only way the films will stop being made. If they don’t make money, the nightmare will stop.

For a brutal frame by frame synopsis of the new trailer head over to Kotaku. They nailed it.